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Surnames of celebrities that are English words (e.g. “Wood”, “Bush”, “Sleep”) were used to explore the relationship between production of common names and proper names that share the same phonology. No effect of priming of face naming latency was found from a prime task in which a written common name was presented and was read aloud, even when subjects were informed the words that they would read aloud were surnames. Production of common names to complete a sentence did not prime famous-face naming. However, the reaction time required to name a famous face by articulating the surname only was primed by seeing the written full name of the celebrity, whether the surname was read aloud or an occupation decision or a familiarity decision was made. No effect of priming was found if the test task did not require name production. The results are interpreted in terms of the information-processing model of face, name, and word recognition proposed by Valentine, Brédart, Lawson, and Ward (1991). It is concluded that the effect of repetition reflects greater accessibility of lexical output codes resulting from an increase in the weight on links from person identity nodes to the output lexicon. Access to the output lexicon is assumed to be mandatory from written input. Common names access the output lexicon from the word recognition system rather than the person recognition system and therefore do not prime face naming latency.

Three experiments examined whether famous faces would be affected by the age at which knowledge of the face was first acquired (AoA). Using a multiple regression design, Experiment 1 showed that rated familiarity and AoA were significant predictors of the time required to name pictures of celebrities' faces and the accuracy of producing their names. Experiment 2 replicated an effect of AoA using a factorial design in which other attributes of the celebrities were matched. In both Experiments 1 and 2, several ratings had been collected from participants before naming latency data were collected. Experiment 3 investigated the accuracy and latency of naming celebrities without any prior exposure to the stimuli. An advantage for naming early acquired celebrities was observed even on the first presentation. The participants named the same celebrities in three subsequent presentations of the stimuli. The effect of AoA was not significant on the fourth presentation. The implications of these results for models of face naming and directions for future research are discussed.

Two experiments are reported that tested predictions derived from the framework of face, object, and word recognition proposed by Valentine, Brennen, and Bredart (1996). The findings were as follows: (1) Production of a celebrity's name in response to seeing the celebrity's face primed a subsequent familiarity decision to the celebrity's printed name. The degree of repetition priming observed was as great as that observed when a familiarity decision to the printed name was repeated in the prime and test phases of the experiment. (2) Makinga familiarity decision to an auditory presentation of a celebrity's name primed a familiarity decision to the same celebrity's name presented visually. The magnitude of cross-modality priming was as great as the magnitude of within-modality repetition priming. This result for people's names contrasted with the effects observed in lexical decision tasks, in which no reliable cross-modality priming was observed. The results cannot be accounted for by previous models of face and name processing. They show a marked contrast between processing people's names and processing words. The results support the framework proposed by Valentine et al. (1996).The implications for models of speech production, perception, and reading are discussed, together with the potential of the methodology to elucidate our understanding of proper name processing.Models offace recognition have been developed by analogy to models ofvisual word recognition. Hay and Young (1982) and Bruce and Young (1986) explicitly derived the notion ofa face recognition unit, which was postulated to mediate recognition ofa familiar face, by analogy to Morton's (1979) logogen model ofword recognition. A logogen is an entry in a mental lexicon that represents a specific known word. The logogen model included a single stage of lexical access for speech production (output logogens) that was separate from modality-specific representations for word recognition (input logogens). The assumption of separate lexical representations for recognition and production of words is typical ofcurrent models ofword recognition (see, e.g., Ellis & Young, 1988;Seidenberg, 1988). As a result ofthe analogy with visual word recognition, it has been assumed that production ofpeople's names involves a single stage ofaccess to a phonological representation that is separate from the representations required to recognize a printed or written name (see, e.g., Burton, Bruce, & Johnston, 1990;Valentine, Bredart, Lawson, & Ward, 1991).In contrast, models of speech production assume that lexical access involves two stages. The message to be articulated is formulated in a nonlexical conceptual system. This research was supported by a grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (Grant R000234612). Correspondence should be addressed to T. Valentine, Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths College, University of London, New Cross, London SEI4 6NW, England (e-mail: t.valentine@gold.ac.uk).-Accepted by previous editor, Geoffrey R. Loftus The first stage ofle...

Three experiments are reported in which a repetition priming technique was used to investigate whether recognition of a person's surname which is also a known word (e.g. Baker) activates the lexical representation that mediates word recognition. Experiment 1 showed that a familiarity decision to familiar full names produced an effect of repetition priming on subsequent lexical decision to words that were presented in the initial task as surnames. Experiment 2 demonstrated that, conversely, a lexical decision primed subsequent familiarity decision to full names involving the same word. Experiment 3 showed that repeating the same decision during the initial and test phases did not produce a larger repetition priming effect than that obtained when the task at test differed from the prime task (name familiarity decision vs lexical decision or vice versa). The results are interpreted as support for the view that repetition priming is due to repeated activation of representations that are accessed by both common names and proper names.